


just a fool in the gold of the sun

by missparker



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, Season/Series 01 Spoilers, nieces and the witch aunts who love them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 11:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16597118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missparker/pseuds/missparker
Summary: Driving home she could have swore she caught a glimpse of a crow in her rear view mirror, flying behind her but when she looked again, the sky was gray, but clear.





	just a fool in the gold of the sun

**Author's Note:**

> back in this trash pit again, sup.

_All men have left here,_  
_But you have remained_  
_At the banks of the river_  
_Forever the same_  
_Though no water flows here_  
_The memory stays_

_As long as it stays you are here_  
_Heartbroken year after year_

**The Motherlode - The Staves**

*

Zelda had been deeply concerned that her half-mortal niece wouldn’t show any signs of magic, but her Showing came right on time. Early, even - three days before her sixth birthday. Instead of asking for the strawberry jam, the little pot had flown across the breakfast table toward Sabrina and smashed against the kitchen wall. Zelda made Sabrina help clean up the mess and then they had a stern talk about manners. After that, Zelda informed the girl that she would begin to have special lessons that she could absolutely not talk about to anyone outside the walls of the Mortuary. 

Sabrina had always been exceptionally bright and somewhat serious, even at nearly six-years-old, so when she said that she understood, Zelda believed her. 

And afterward, when Sabrina was seen safely off to Kindergarten at Greendale Elementary School, Zelda and her sister indulged in a good cry of relief. Edward had left detailed instructions for the girl, never doubting that she would be gifted, not even once, but there were so few documented instances of half-mortal witches and Zelda never could be quite sure that things would, well, progress. 

Her Showing had eased some tension, at any rate, and things got more lighthearted. Ambrose and Sabrina had a special bond that Hilda encouraged and Zelda did not discourage. Ambrose had come to them in 1943 and had moped for the next sixty-nine years. He’d only turned a corner when Sabrina had arrived. Zelda allowed Ambrose to oversee some of her lessons - the flashy things. Telekinesis, levitation, electromagnetism. Ambrose was a powerful warlock in his own right, even despite his restrictions. 

By ten, Sabrina’s favorite lessons were spent in the kitchen with Hilda. Zelda considered Hilda’s strengths the softer side of magic but could see that they had their place in Sabrina’s well rounded education. Hilda liked to make charms, to whisper spells into her big stock pot, to bind things into her jam jars and bake her will into pies. 

Sabina worked her way through Ambrose, would finish with Hilda in due time. She would find Zelda when the time was right and then they would start the most important of her lessons. The lessons that led her firmly down the Path of Night. 

oooo

Three days before her thirteenth birthday - right on time - Sabrina knocked on the closed door to her aunt’s bedroom. When Hilda opened the door, she found her only niece with tear stained cheeks and mismatched pajama bottoms.

“Darling!” Hilda said. “What’s happened? What’s the matter?”

But Sabrina wanted Zelda and Zelda only; waited until they were alone to admit in a small voice that she’d bled through her pajamas in the night and stained her bedsheets. At the admission, her tears began anew. 

“You’ve done nothing wrong,” Zelda announced with authority. “Nothing at all.” 

Zelda moved them to the bathroom, ran a bath in the deep clawfoot tub and put her niece into it. She sprinkled salt over the top of the water, a handful of dried lavender, and a sprig of yarrow. 

Zelda spent the next thirty minutes explaining what Sabrina would have to do moving forward. They’d burn the bed sheets because there was no blood more precious and powerful than a witch’s menstrual blood. She would use special strips of cloth to absorb the blood that they made in the Mortuary and she’d have to burn those as well. 

“We throw ours in the crematory more often than not,” Zelda said. Sabrina already knew to do the same with the hair she cleaned out of her hairbrush and the nails she clipped from her fingers and toes that she kept in a glass bowl on her bureau so this additional task was met with easy acceptance. 

“And there are good things,” Zelda said, when Sabrina returned to looking forlorn in her bath. “You’re going to be more powerful. It also means that we’re growing closer to your dark baptism.”

“Three years,” Sabrina complained moodily - already the sulkiness of puberty was setting in. 

“They will fly by,” Zelda promised, reaching into the tub to run her fingers through Sabrina’s wet hair. “They’ve just… flown by, my love.” Zelda didn’t often become emotional and Sabrina looked up in surprise at this rare display. She leaned over the edge of the tub and wrapped her arms around her aunt, hugging her fiercely. Zelda didn’t even mind the wet.

Zelda let her stay home from school that day and they spent it together, alternating between reading verses from the Satanic Bible and learning new spells that Sabrina had never dared try before. It was one of her happier days. Perhaps the happiest.

She sat vigil with Sabrina all night long, as tradition required, resting only when the dawn broke, slipping away before Sabrina ever realized she’d been there. 

oooo

“Ambrose never talks about his family,” Sabrina said, apropos of nothing when she was fourteen. Zelda needed to drive to Riverdale to pick up a new airbrush compressor. Sabrina had recently begun to show an interest in makeup - Ambrose was hopeful that the interest could be extended and Sabrina might learn to do the makeup of the cadavers that came through the Mortuary. Zelda found that to be a long shot, but she took Sabrina on this errand across Sweetwater River anyway. Zelda would show Sabrina the compressor, explain how regular cosmetics wouldn’t work on the dead because after embalming, the creams would no longer absorb into the skin. Airbrushing was the only way to make the dead look like the living again. 

“And?” Zelda asked. They were on the bridge over the river - being in an in between place always prompted Sabrina to ask questions. She ought to have expected it. 

“I know that we are his family,” Sabrina said. “But he must have a mother and a father.”

Zelda didn’t dignify this with a response. 

“Who… who is his father?” Sabrina asked. 

“His father is dead,” Zelda said. 

“And his mother?” Sabrina asked.

“You know very well and good that his mother is my sister,” Zelda said. 

“Vesta,” Sabrina said softly. 

“Yes,” Zelda said. 

“Why doesn’t she ever visit him?” Sabrina asked, the question finally tumbling out. “Or you and Auntie Hilda or… or me?”

Zelda navigated them past the edge of the bridge and back onto solid ground. Easing them into the town of Riverdale didn’t quell Sabrina’s curiosity, however.

“Some people are… not meant to be mothers,” Zelda settled on finally. “Vesta is the oldest of my siblings and was expected to marry and have a family, which she did, though she fought it every step of the way. Ambrose’s father was cruel to her, so when he was very small, she felt that her obligations had been fulfilled and she left.”

Sabrina looked into her lap contemplatively. 

“But Vesta is and always was selfish and vain, Sabrina. Her circumstances were mostly of her own making. She found a husband that would upset our father on purpose, she sabotaged her own fertility at every turn and then when that didn’t work, she left behind her own child without a second thought. She is not someone I want around you.” 

Sabrina mulled this over for awhile and finally said, “But surely some part of Ambrose must want to see her.”

“Surely,” Zelda conceded. “But he cannot leave the house to find her and she’ll never come on her own.”

“Where is she?” Sabrina asked. 

“I don’t know,” Zelda said, which was a lie. She didn’t want Sabrina to go searching or reaching out. Vesta was in Europe and had been since the 20s. In America, leaving one’s coven was dangerous but in Europe, their numbers were greater. Witches had more choice. “Vesta hated Greendale, hated our coven. She didn’t even return when your father became High Priest and that is truly unforgivable.”

They arrived at their location. Zelda had to park carefully - the hearse was long and their only vehicle. They didn’t leave the house very often. Zelda didn’t like to go into Greendale and did her errands in Riverdale if possible. She had Hilda had been running the Mortuary for nearly 100 years now and while the Mortuary itself was charmed to make people forget what the sisters looked like when they left the property, it was always riskier when she was on mortal territory. She didn’t want to run into someone who’d seen her when they were a child at service for a grandparent, to marvel that she remained unchanged. 

Big drops of water started to pelt the windshield and she sighed. 

“I’ll go in Auntie Zee,” Sabrina said. “You can stay here.” 

Sabrina’s sweetness and good nature were inherent. She liked helping and healing and fighting for a cause. Edward had been the same way and their parents had masterfully used that to put him on a path to greatness. Zelda only hoped she could do the same with Sabrina. There was a time when the Spellman family was the most power family in the Church of Night - the leaders of the most powerful coven on the eastern seaboard. Now, in Faustus Blackwood’s hands, the Church was regressing. Their numbers dwindling. People left the coven knowing how vulnerable it made them, but they did it anyway. 

“Alright,” Zelda agreed, reaching for her handbag. She pulled her velvet coin purse out and handed it over. “There should be enough in there.” 

Sabrina took it, shoved the coin purse into the pocket of her raincoat and flipped up her hood. She’d only recently cut off nearly a foot of her golden blonde hair and the cut suited her. Hilda had done it in the kitchen and swept the hair away to be burned. She’d wanted to keep just a small lock but Zelda had forbade it. Too unsafe. Hilda’s sentimentality would get them into trouble if left unchecked.

Sabrina ran across the parking lot and into the building. 

It took about ten minutes for her to reappear. Zelda didn’t worry, Sabrina knew how to ask for help without mortals cottoning on, sending her plea directly to Zelda’s internal thoughts. Finally, the door opened and Sabrina came out holding a large and what looked to be a heavy box. Zelda got out and rushed around the car in the rain to open the back door so she could put it in the car. 

“Auntie, no,” Sabrina said, panting but exasperated. “You weren’t supposed to get wet!”

Back in the car, Sabrina’s jacket covered with droplets but her hair dry, Zelda patted the moisture away from her own hair, letting her driving gloves absorb what they could. Before she turned on the engine, Zelda leaned over and kissed Sabrina’s temple, leaving a ring of red on her fair skin.

“Thank you, niece,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” Sabrina said. “I still don’t think I want to do makeup on dead people, though.” 

No one really did, Zelda thought, but kept it to herself.

oooo

“I don’t care for that boy,” Zelda said into the darkness of their bedroom. The light had been off for a good ten minutes, but she didn’t hear Hilda snoring. It did take her a few moments to respond.

“Harvey is a very nice boy,” Hilda countered. “And they seem to like each other very much.”

“It’s not a good idea,” Zelda said.

“No,” Hilda agreed. “But you’d hate any mortal boy.”

Zelda made a small noise of agreement. That was true. It had been Hilda who argued to let Sabrina go to mortal school, that if anything it would socialize her in a way that she and Zelda could not. But now it was this - getting so tangled up in mortal affairs. She’d gotten a decent education, but the severing of her connections would be difficult and painful. The last thing they needed was for her to fall into teenage love. 

“What if they have sex?” Zelda demands. 

“Well, we can work against that,” Hilda said. “Also, I trust Sabrina to understand how important her baptism is.”

“What if she tells him the truth?”

“Zelda we’ve spent fifteen years teaching her to keep that secret, you think she’ll stop now?” Hilda asked. “Throw it all away for some boy?”

“Is that not exactly what Edward did? Put everything into jeopardy for a mortal?” Zelda asked. 

Hilda made a small noise and then rolled over to switch on her bedside lamp. “What if I put on the kettle?”

Zelda nodded. She felt too helpless just lying there, she needed something to do even if that thing was nursing a pot of tea into the small hours.

And Hilda did make a fine pot of tea. Zelda didn’t pretend she didn’t see what Hilda sprinkled into the kettle before putting on the lid to let it steep or how she murmured something into the draught before pouring it into tea cups. When Zelda took a sip, a warmth spread through her, comforting and cozy. 

She reached out her hand across the table. “Thank you, sister.”

Hilda looked surprised but took her hand in return, blushed when Zelda gave it a small squeeze before letting go. 

Hilda went to bed, but Zelda never did and was still sitting at the table in her nightgown and headscarf when Sabrina came down. It was still early, but she was dressed for school, with her school bag on her shoulder.

“Good morning,” Sabrina said cautiously. 

“And to you,” Zelda said. “Where are you off to so bright and early?”

“Harvey is walking me to school,” Sabrina said. And then, “Did you sleep okay?”

“I didn’t sleep at all,” Zelda said, running her finger through some sugar spilled on the top of the table. Sabrina let her bag drop to the floor and sat in her usual seat.

“Are you okay?” Sabrina asked.

Zelda lifted her chin, weighed the pros and cons of the truth. Zelda knew how to deceive people but she wasn’t one to lie outright, especially to family. “I worry about you.”

“Me?” Sabrina said. “I’m fine.”

“Still,” Zelda said. “It’s my job to make sure you become the best you can be and I’m concerned I’m not doing enough.”

“Is this about my baptism?” Sabrina asked. “Aunt Zelda that’s still months away!”

“It will be here before you know it,” Zelda said. “Maybe we ought to pull you from Baxter High so you can focus on-”

“No way,” Sabrina said. “You cannot do that!”

Zelda put up her hand, nodded. “All right.” She’d known she wouldn’t get away with that. “Can I fix your breakfast?”

“I’m not sure I have time,” Sabrina said apologetically.

Zelda leaned in conspiratorially. “We’ll stretch it a little, hmm?”

Sabrina grinned and nodded. 

Hilda used the kind of magic that Sabrina saw day to day. Zelda knew she had not been the primary model for every day magic in Sabrina’s eyes. It was just as well - she didn’t want Sabrina astral projecting or the things that Zelda did to the corpses that passed through their mortuary. But for today, for now, Zelda relished in her audience. 

In fact, she let Sabrina help her make the bubble. They chanted together, surrounding the kitchen until everything slowed down. Dust mites hung in the air, a fly that had been buzzing around the window was reduced to a slow, deep hum.

“There we go,” Zelda said. “Snug as a bug.”

She fried eggs and bacon, let Sabrina make the toast. Together they ground coffee beans and filled the french press with hot water. Sabrina still loved to compress the plunger after it was finished steeping.

“I want to do it, I want to do it,” she said excitedly, like she was still a little girl.

Zelda had hoped that they’d finish their meal and spend some borrowed time chatting, gossiping even. But they’d only just finished eating when Hilda came in through the swinging kitchen door and the bubble burst.

And then the doorbell.

“That’ll be Harvey,” Sabrina said, though she did sound a little sad.

“Off you go then,” Zelda said. Sabrina picked up her bag, set her breakfast dish in the sink and headed for the door. Only then, she hesitated, spun on the heel of her shoe and rushed back only to throw her arms around Zelda.

“I love you, bye,” she said and then scooted out the door. 

Zelda stood, faced the sink to wipe her eyes and then reached into the pocket of her robe for her cigarettes and holder. She slipped it onto her finger, clipped in a cigarette, lit it and took a deep drag. 

But when she spun back around Hilda was watching her anyway with a sugary expression that made her blood boil.

“What?” Zelda snapped. 

“Nothing,” Hilda said. “Nothing at all, sister.”

oooo

After the third time Sabrina mentioned Miss Wardwell from her school, Zelda thought she best go down to that infernal high school and have a talk. Sabrina used to come to her Aunts for questions and advice and now she was going to some stranger? Unacceptable.

“She’s not a mortal,” Sabrina said. “She’s just from another coven, I guess. Excommunicated because she believed in what my father was doing with the Church of Night.” 

Now that sounded like some real horse shit. If Zelda was to concoct some kind of scenario to win over Sabrina, it’d be exactly like that. Something that appealed to Sabrina’s need to help the underdog, and to her vanity and blind devotion when it came to her parents. 

Zelda waited for Sabrina to go to school and then, after a while, followed along. She parked the hearse a few streets away and walked onto the campus. No one stopped her. In the main office, the woman behind the desk tried to send her away, but it didn’t take hardly anything at all to get her to change her mind, and show Zelda to Miss Wardwell’s office. 

“Her first class is out in twenty minutes,” the secretary said, swaying slightly in her fog. 

“Oh, I will be waiting,” Zelda said. “You may leave now.” 

She sat for a moment in the hard wooden chair, looking around the dark office. Outside the window, a crow squawked loudly and flew away. 

They’d met briefly, once before when the teacher had come to the house to plan a funeral that had never materialized. Zelda had worried at the flimsy lie and had searched the house to find only what was missing. Dresses with the linings cut out, things missing from the tops of their bureaus, everything rifled through. She’d stayed up all night, doubling down on protection charms for the house and then that nightmare demon had held them all hostage, the charms doing nothing to protect them from what was already inside.

It was horrible when one’s own house didn’t feel safe. 

Maybe Zelda couldn’t blame the teacher for all the things that had gone wrong lately, no, most of that could be traced back to Sabrina herself, but Zelda had a suspicious that Miss Wardwell was involved somehow. 

It took twenty-five minutes for Miss Wardwell to return and she didn’t seem at all surprised to see Zelda Spellman sitting in her office. 

The crow was back outside the window, sitting on a gnarled and naked branch of an old tree. 

“Yes, Miss Spellman, how can I help you today?” she said settling behind her desk without looking at Zelda and then meeting her eye only once they were level. 

“I think we can cut the caring teacher act, can’t we?” Zelda said. 

Something very minute changed in Miss Wardwell’s facial expression - she went darker, colder somehow. It didn’t frighten Zelda, no, she was relieved to see that her hunch had been right and that there was more to this woman than met the eye. 

“If you prefer,” she said.

“It concerns me how much influence you have on my niece,” Zelda said. “Sabina needs to focus on her obligations to her family.”

“Sabrina,” Miss Wardwell said seriously, “Needs to sign the book.”

Zelda sat back, surprised. She wasn’t sure what she expected, exactly, but it was not to hear her own goal so explicitly spelled out.

“Yes,” Zelda breathed. “I agree.”

“I know about you, Zelda, and your family. I believed very deeply in your brother and believe deeply still in the beliefs he shared. I feel like I know you too, and can say that you are a woman of class and of values.”

Zelda straightened her spine at the mention of her brother, of the legacy he’d left behind him, in her care. 

“I know you’ve spent the last sixteen years shaping Sabrina into a respectable young woman,” Miss Wardwell continued. “The Dark Lord simply sent me to help you help Sabrina along the Path of Night. To do the work perhaps you cannot.” She leaned in with a wink. “The dirty work.” 

“The Dark Lord sent you?” Zelda blurted before she could help herself.

“Asked me personally,” Miss Wardwell confirmed. “I know I must look like some quack off the street with this distant coven nonsense but I could hardly tell the girl the deck was stacked against her.” She laughed merrily. “It’s best to deceive her, maybe, but not you. I respect you too much for that,” she said, wiping the corner of her mouth where the red lipstick met her skin. “Zelda.” 

Zelda found herself nodding. She didn’t find Miss Wardwell to be particularly trustworthy but for some reason Zelda felt inclined to go along with the woman. After all, anyone following the instruction of the Dark Lord was inherently doing the right thing. 

“He seems very keen on my niece,” Zelda said, with equal parts pride and trepidation. “Why do you think that is? What do you think he has planned?”

“Oh,” Miss Wardwell said. “Great things, I imagine. She’s bright and powerful, set to inherit both her her father’s brains and good reputation-” She raised one finger, perfectly manicured with a shiny black polish. “If she signs the book.”

“What can we do, how can I help?” Zelda asked. “I feel like I’m at my wit’s end. She was always so gracious, so well-behaved. I’ve dedicated myself to making her into the best witch I know how and-”

A bell sounded overhead, cutting her off and it was just as well. She felt herself on the verge of tears and anyway, it wouldn’t do to have Sabrina see her here. Sabrina hated when she meddled in mortal things. 

“Zelda,” Miss Wardwell said. “I can call you Zelda? Can’t I?”

Zelda nodded.

“I’d like to work together on this. Even more, I’d like for us to be friends. I don’t know many people in Greendale, people like us, that is.” Miss Wardwell smiled. “Come for tea soon, Zelda, I have a lovely cottage. I’ll send word, hmm? And don’t you worry about Sabrina.” Miss Wardwell was gathering things from her desk, holding them to her chest. “She’ll be safe in my hands.” 

And then she was gone, down the hall filled with students. 

Zelda waited until the passing period was over and then went back to her car.

Driving home she could have swore she caught a glimpse of a crow in her rear view mirror, flying behind her but when she looked again, the sky was gray, but clear.

oooo

Word did come. An invitation in the mailbox for Zelda and Zelda alone to come to tea. It wasn’t posted - there was no address or stamp affixed, but it arrived just the same.

“Did you see anyone come up the drive?” Zelda asked Ambrose and he replied that he hadn’t. 

The invitation was for tea on Saturday afternoon. There was no contact information, just the address. Zelda knew where it was roughly, just outside of town. A bit of a trek for her to go to the high school every day, but one could see the appeal of being remote enough that one didn’t come across students in off hours. 

Sabrina was at the Academy for the weekend, so it was easy to slip away.

“I have an engagement,” was all she’d said to Hilda when her sister caught her contemplating the merits of two different dresses. 

“I know, I know, excommunicated,” Hilda said and left the room in a huff. 

Zelda chose a dark red dress with a red lace overlay and a dark red lipstick to compliment it. Something about Miss Wardwell made her want to look a little more wicked. Something about that woman woke up a feeling inside of Zelda that she’d spent a great many years pushing down. 

When they’d gotten Sabrina, in fact. She’d set everything else in her life aside. Every selfish desire. 

She’d gotten used to driving the hearse around, the way people did double takes as she drove through town. She remembered the first car she’d ever driven, a Studebaker Big Six that her father had purchased. That big old thing had made such a racket that heads had turned then, too. 

Miss Wardwell’s cottage was easy enough to find and was old, maybe as old as the Mortuary that she and Hilda had purchased back in the 30s. Miss Wardwell must have been expecting her despite her lack of RSVP because when she pulled up to the house, the front door opened.

“You came!” Miss Wardwell said delightedly when Zelda carefully stepped out of the car. 

“Of course,” Zelda said. She clutched her handbag, looked around at the tall trees. “A nice little spot you have here.”

“Oh it’s fine,” Miss Wardwell said. “Do come in.” 

Perhaps she should have brought something. A bottle of wine, though it was early for that. A tin of sweets. Hilda would have made something, had she asked, but Zelda was wary of inviting questions or interference. So she'd arrived empty handed. Mary Wardwell didn’t seem to mind as she took Zelda’s coat and hung it on the rack by the door, showed her to a little round table set for tea. 

Zelda settled into her chair, accepted the cup that Miss Wardwell provided for her in a bone white china. 

“Were you and your brother close?” Miss Wardwell asked once they were settled. It was an abrupt question to start with and Zelda felt a bit surprised. 

“Oh. Yes,” Zelda said. “Very. I loved Edward very much, almost as if he was my own. I was twenty when he was born, so… I raised him as much as anyone else did.”

“And then his daughter.”

“Yes,” Zelda said. 

“And if she produces an heir and bangs off this mortal coil, will you raise that one as well?” Miss Wardwell asked. 

Zelda stared at her. 

Miss Wardwell started to laugh, a high cackle. “I’m only joking.”

Zelda laughed uneasily along. She would, of course. She’d raise as many generations as she could. Wasn’t that her curse? Baby after baby, none of them her own?

oooo

Zelda invited Mary Wardwell to dinner over the telephone (“Call me Mary, _please_!”), though she did so against her better judgement. It was always hard to explain one’s family. Zelda felt fiercely loyal to her lifetime partnership with her sister, but Hilda was embarrassing at times, unfocused and flighty. Ambrose’s crime and subsequent punishment was not of her doing, though she felt it reflected back upon her. 

Even Sabrina’s familiar was feral. It didn’t seem to matter where she turned, there imperfection was lurking in the shadows. 

Zelda made Ambrose re-set the table when she came downstairs to check on progress. They were going to eat in the formal dining room which meant everyone had to clear their things off the large table that usually served as a catchall. Sabrina had to clear her school books and class notes. Ambrose his stacks of records, Hilda her sewing. Zelda swept through the parlor, sweeping a half completed puzzle back into its box despite Hilda’s protests. 

Zelda even complained about the cooking, proclaiming Hilda’s stew too salty, that stew wasn’t chic enough even though the temperature had dropped again. 

“Aunt Zelda,” Sabrina said, grabbing her elbow. “You seem a little nervous. Can I make you a drink?”

“Yes!” Ambrose said. “That, cousin, is an excellent idea.”

“I don’t need a drink, there’s wine to go with dinner,” Zelda said. She turned to call over her shoulder hatefully, “Though I don’t have a stew wine!”

“It can be our secret,” Sabrina said. “Dubonnet? Your favorite?”

“Oh, alright,” Zelda said.

“I’ll have one,” Hilda muttered from over by the stove. 

Sabrina made haste, keeping her eye on her aunt as Zelda straightened the cutlery on the table. When she handed the cocktail over she said again, “You seem nervous.”

“We rarely have guests,” Zelda said. “There’s always room to make a good impression.”

“I’ve never had a teacher over to my house before,” Sabrina said, frowning. “But I guess that’s because they’ve all been mortal, before now.”

“I think she’s a good influence,” Zelda said. “We should put a witch in every high school.”

“What about not interfering with mortal affairs?” Sabrina asked with a smirk. 

“True, but we could recruit,” Zelda said with a wink. Sabrina laughed. Between Sabrina’s good cheer and handiness with a cocktail set, by the time Mary Wardwell arrived, Zelda did feel a little more herself. Hilda’s stew was good and Mary seemed to like it, Ambrose was on his best behavior and Sabrina seemed to really listen to Mary when she’d brush off Zelda saying the exact same thing. Mary was charming, had them all laughing by the end of the meal.

“Oh,” she said with a sigh, dabbing under her eyes with her napkin. “I forgot what it was like to spend time with my own kind of people.”

“Wait,” Sabrina said. “Actually - why _can_ you work at the high school?”

“Sorry?” Mary asked. Zelda wanted to kick Sabrina under the table but she didn’t think she could reach or get away with it. 

“My aunts are always talking about not interfering with mortals, but you spend all week with them. Why is that allowed?” she demanded.

“Sabrina,” Zelda said softly, evenly. Warningly.

“Special dispensation,” Mary said with a wink. 

“There’s sure a lot of those going around,” Sabrina said.

“Sabrina,” Hilda said. “Help me with the cake.” 

Zelda excused herself to visit the powder room while Ambrose told the story of his misspent youth. She stood at the sink, fingers gripping the porcelain as she stared at herself in the mirror. After her pre-dinner drink and two glasses of wine, color was high on her cheeks. She washed her hands in icy water and watched her reflection smirk back at her.

“Oh shut up,” she told it.

They ate cake and then Sabrina begged off to go meet Harvey. Ambrose and Hilda cleared the table and it left Zelda and Mary alone in the dining room. 

“You don’t have a thing to worry about,” Mary said. “This is a family that the Dark Lord can be proud of.”

Zelda smiled. “Thank you.”

“I know that the High Priest is supposed to be the earthly incarnation of the Dark Lord but between you and me,” Mary said lowering her voice. “I think Blackwood takes that a bit too far. Pushes his own agenda in the Dark Lord’s name.” 

“Just like a man,” Zelda said, matching her quiet tone. “How long has it been since we’ve had a high priestess in Greendale?”

“It was the Dark Lord’s hope, I believe, that we could have another one again,” Mary said. “In your niece.”

“Really?” Zelda asked. “Even… with a mortal mother?”

“A dark baptism and signing his book and she’s a full witch. And anyway, your dear brother laid the groundwork for a more… shall we say… inclusive future.”

Mary reached out, took Zelda’s hand. Her skin was cool, soft. Zelda felt like her own hand was embarrassingly hot, she had to work not to squirm in her chair. 

“Shall we work together? A united front?”

“Sabrina… she won’t take orders. It’ll have to be her idea,” Zelda said, her voice sounding shaky to her own ears. 

“I can work with that,” Mary said, pulling Zelda’s hand to her lips and pressing her lips against the pale skin of her inner wrist. 

The faint imprint of red lips were still there later, when she was getting ready for bed. She looked at them for a long time before washing the lipstick off in the sink. 

In bed, with Hilda snoring softly beside her, she let herself indulge briefly in where else those lips might leave a mark before calling herself silly and falling into a fitful sleep. 

oooo

There was a time when Zelda’s only desire was that Sabrina would sign the Book of the Beast, but now that she had, Zelda felt she could want more than one thing again. If she were a silly girl, young and inexperienced like Sabrina, she might do the same and take a bite of a Malum Malus to see what her future held. Would the Spellman name be restored to its former glory? Would the Dark Lord notice her lifetime of devotion if her niece was the first high priestess in three hundred years? And if Mary Wardwell completed her task of Sabrina’s rise to power, what would she do? Where would she go? What would her reward be?

A small part of Zelda worried that she’d simply never see Mary Wardwell again. The more logical part of her brain told her no, that Mary would want to see things through to the end - Sabrina as high priestess of the Coven. Still, there was no reason for a witch to help someone outside of her family into power without there being something in it for herself. Zelda needed to figure out what that thing was for Mary Wardwell.

She didn’t have time to dwell, however, because she had to deal with the baby. At first she just thought she’d keep it, raise it up, but Hilda and Ambrose convinced her that it was too dangerous. That Faustus already had a habit of dropping by unannounced, that their lives were already too intertwined to hide a whole person. 

“You think I’m naive, sister,” Hilda said later, when they were alone. “That I don’t know what you've been doing with our high priest.”

“Doing for the family!” Zelda said defensively. “For protection from what might come! He’s not who I… want!”

Not who she really wanted, she’d almost said. It was dangerous to almost say something in front of Hilda, Hilda who could look inside of someone and pull out the nugget of whatever they hid with no trouble at all. A Spellman gift that no one excelled at like Hilda. And Hilda did peer at her for a long, painful stretch but then shook her head. 

“There’s a family in the Pelham coven who hasn’t been able to conceive,” Hilda said. “I’ll send word.” 

And so the baby consumed them until it was time to pack her up along with her meager possessions which were mostly Sabrina’s old things, and head toward the city. Zelda didn’t want to take the hearse, so Sabrina borrowed Harvey’s truck (“We’re still _friends_ , Auntie Zee.”), and they took off in the small hours, the baby wedged between them in her old car seat. 

Sabrina sat with her head against the glass window while Zelda drove and the baby slept.

“I thought I might raise her,” Zelda said halfway into the trip. “Like I had with you.”

“Get a chance to do it right?” Sabrina said, jokingly.

“I did it right,” Zelda promised her. 

Sabrina smiled at her, wiggled the baby’s foot lightly. “Aunt Hilda was right, thought. We’d be found out. It’s better this way.”

The problem was, there was an emptiness inside Zelda and it had been there for a long time. Getting Sabrina, raising her and loving her had helped for awhile, but Sabrina was grown and outgrowing her small life with her spinster aunts. She’d snatched the baby to save it, but also because she’d hoped the same bandage would work twice. Now she had no baby, her niece at the academy, and her sister in another room.

The baby bundled off to its new home, the truck returned, Sabrina disappeared to the library to work on homework. Ambrose was at the Academy, Hilda was at work and Zelda had the house to herself. A true rarity. But the emptiness outside only made the emptiness inside feel more stark, more hollow.

She trudged up to her room, got down on her knees at the side of her bed, a prayer stance she hadn’t used since she was a young girl. 

“Dark Lord, I beg of you,” she murmured into her quilt. “Fill this emptiness inside of me. Point me on the right path and fill me up.” 

“Oh honey, all you have to do is ask. The Dark Lord is merciful.”

Zelda, so startled to look up and see Mary Wardwell perched on her bed, fell back and landed without grace on her backside. 

Mary just extended a hand to help her back up.

“What are you doing in my bedroom?” Zelda demanded.

“Our Lord is not a false god, when you pray, he listens,” Mary said. “There’s no need to be lonely, Zelda. There’s no need to be alone.” 

Zelda took her hand and was surprised by the strength in that slim arm as it hauled her back up. It put them face to face - Zelda on her feet and Mary on her knees on Zelda’s twin bed. 

“Will you let me, Zelda?” Mary said, reaching out to move a strand of Zelda’s hair. Zelda could see her gaze drop down to her mouth. “Will you let me help?”

“Is it you?” Zelda asked. “Or is it only because it’s the Dark Lord’s will?”

Mary smiled softly, leaned in until they were almost… almost there.

“Both,” she said softly. 

oooo

There was something delicious about having a secret, having something to carry around instead of nothing. A place to go if she wanted to get away. Mary’s cottage was remote and quiet and if they spent a few hours making love in her queen sized bed in the name of the Dark Lord, so what? Sabrina was grown, spending more and more time at the Academy. Ambrose had a boyfriend and some freedom. Hilda was getting her wish, whether she decided she liked it or not: distance from her sister.

And Zelda was certainly getting filled up. Mary could make her writhe around that bed with two fingers, with her mouth, with her whole body depending on her mood. 

And though perhaps there wasn’t something quite human about Mary Wardwell, mortal or witch or otherwise, Zelda found she didn't care. So she was a concoction of the Dark Lord, or something worse. So what?

Wasn’t that simply part of the secret?

Now that she had one, she could see the others carrying theirs too. Ambrose’s concerns about Father Blackwood, Hilda and that bookstore owner, Sabrina thinking no one knew she was still carrying on with Harvey Kinkle.

And Mary with something hard and foreign just beneath her soft, sweet skin.

Zelda’s father used to say Spellmans were good at secrets - a thing one told a witch child to help them steer clear of mortals, surely, but perhaps the truth because here was Zelda, all filled up like she’d asked, with secrets dark and wild.


End file.
